Chapter 7
Ben’s breath heaved in and out of his lungs as he bolted upright. His pistol immediately came to his hand as he looked around through the darkness. The ground underneath him was hard, and his surroundings were unfamiliar. Where was he camping that night?
The narrow, arched windows reminded him. Ben wasn’t camping with the army, and the hardness underneath him wasn’t the ground. He was in the church. He was at St. Thomas. He was home.
Her cursed under his breath, ashamed of himself for feeling so afraid in the one place where he shouldn’t. Then he turned to the altar, eyeing the large crucifix that hung above it. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
The double door at the front of the church rattled, startling him all over again.
Then Ben knew that it hadn’t simply been a bad dream of the front lines that’d made his heart pound. Someone was here.
Pushing the blankets aside, he approached the front doors on silent bare feet. Ben still knew all the places where the wooden floor would creak, and he avoided them with ease.
Though anyone was welcome to come to the daily services, the doors to St. Thomas Church were always kept locked when the chapel wasn’t in use. The orphans, the nuns, and Father Tillman could still reach it through the door that connected the church to the orphanage.
At one time, though, the doors had remained unlocked for anyone who might need the Lord’s guidance. The policy changed when Sister Matthews went into the chapel to find that a group of drifters had set up camp among the pews.
They’d helped themselves to the altar candles and the sacramental wine. One of them had found the pantry in the adjoining orphanage and raided it thoroughly. These were not worshippers. They were taking over the church and trying to make it their own.
Ben remembered the chaos it’d caused clearly. The girls had been terrified. Some of the boys were scared. Others wanted to fight the drifters and chase them away from their territory. Still others had been curious about the drifters and wanted to visit with them.
Father Tillman had managed to chase them away, and the doors had been kept locked ever since.
Ben pressed his ear to the door. The wood was thick, and it offered no clue as to who stood on the other side. He readjusted his grip on his pistol, an instrument that he’d used more after the war than during it, as he grabbed the lock and slowly turned it.
The metal bolt let out a loud chunk as it slid back. Ben whipped open the door, but nobody was there.
He stared out over the churchyard, confused. Someone had absolutely tried the doors. The first time had awoken him and could’ve been part of a dream. But he’d been awake the second time, and he knew what he’d heard.
Ben stepped outside and looked around. The scrubby grass stretched out before him, worn thin by the dry mountain air and the many years of children playing. The garden was to his right. As he craned his head to the left, he spotted movement.
A ghostly figure crept along the side of the church. Her hair spilled down her back, blotting out the pale color of her dress. She braced her hand on the side of the building as she limped along, seeming to look for another entrance.
“Hey, there!” Ben called. He rubbed his thumb against the side of his pistol, ready to use it but hoping he wouldn’t have to.
The woman turned. She froze, and she looked so much like a startled deer that Ben thought she might run off into the night. Then she lifted her free hand to wave at him, her staggered steps bringing her back along the side of the building.
“Are you…are you…open?” she asked uncertainly.
Something dark stained the front of her dress.
As she drifted closer, the smell of sweat and dirt reached Ben’s nostrils.
And blood. He hesitated. She couldn’t have been any older than he was.
Her short stature and the darkness made it even harder to guess her age.
He hadn’t seen anyone like her with the drifters of past years.
“Not exactly,” he hedged.
“I’m…I’m sorry.” She twisted her hands in front of her. “I thought churches were open all the time. I just…I just needed a place to rest for a moment.”
She sagged against the side of the building, and Ben reached out to catch her before she could fall. He stepped backwards, pulling her into the church and hoping he wasn’t making a mistake. He’d only just come back to St. Thomas, and it wasn’t up to him to decide who could or couldn’t come in.
But she was just a young woman. If she was just a couple of years younger, she’d be the same age as Florence, Ben reasoned to himself. He shut the door behind them.
It made her jump, not unlike the way his own muscles had twitched when Shane had dropped his cup at supper. “It’s all right. Sit here. Let me get some candles going.”
He deposited her in one of the pews and hurried to the altar. The one remaining candle had burned down to a stub, and he used it to light several others on a candlestick. Ben brought this back with him, and as he went up the aisle, he got a good look at exactly who he’d just let into the church.
The warm glow of the candles illuminated a scene Ben had a hard time comprehending.
The woman was covered in blood. It was splattered all over the front of her dress, a thick line of dark crust that extended from the bust to the hem.
Or rather, what was left of the hem. The raggedy cloth drifted around her bare feet like a shroud.
Cuts, bruises, and scrapes covered any part of her body that Ben could see outside of the miserable dress. The skin on her elbows had been abraded away.
Lines of bruises on her upper arms that looked startlingly like a man’s fingers gave Ben a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Her feet actively dripped watery blood onto the floor.
When she looked up at him, her skin pale and her eyes uncertain, Ben realized how beautiful she was despite her rough condition. Her eyes were wide, and they angled up slightly at the outer corners. Her nose was slim and slightly upturned. Though her lips were cracked, they were generously formed.
“Who are you?” Ben whispered. The quiet church seemed to require him to keep the silence despite the odd situation.
She pressed her lips together. One of the cracks deepened and created a new swell of blood. The tip of her tongue darted out and back in. “I just need a place to rest for a moment. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You’re not,” he replied instantly. Yes, she’d woken him up, but clearly, she had much bigger problems than some disturbed sleep. “What happened to you?”
Her chest heaved. Her lips parted as though she might say something, but then they closed again. “Perhaps I should go.”
“No. Please don’t.” He put out a hand to stop her. The candlelight trembled, and Ben realized it was because his own hand was shaking. The girl both frightened and intrigued him. “You need some help. Let me go get Sister Matthews.”
“No!” She shot to her feet, wincing as soon as they hit the floor. “I didn’t expect to find anybody here. I wasn’t planning on bothering anybody. I’ll leave.”
He moved swiftly, putting himself between the girl and the front doors they’d come in through.
Everything inside him told him not to let her go, that he’d be doing the exact opposite of what Sister Matthews had tried to instill in him during his time at St. Thomas.
“She’ll want to help you. She’s very kind. I promise.”
The woman studied him. It was difficult to tell the color of her eyes with only the light of the candles. They flickered to him, then to the door, and the back again before she nodded. “All right. But I can’t pay you anything,”
“Don’t worry about that. Just sit down. I’ll be right back. I promise.” Ben paused in the aisle, wondering if she might run off into the night or disappear like the ghost she seemed to be. Then he ran for the door that went to the orphanage.
Sister Matthews’ bedroom was right off the kitchen where she’d be able to hear if any children were getting up to mischief in the middle of the night. Ben knocked frantically at her door, the candlestick still shivering in his hand and throwing odd shapes against the wall.
He looked over his shoulder toward the church as he waited. He’d seen so many wounded soldiers, some of them who were so badly injured that they couldn’t be saved. He’d smelled the medicine and the rot. The strange girl moved his mind back and forth between the present and the past.
The door swung open, revealing Sister Matthews. “What is it?”
“There’s a woman,” he began, unsure of how to tell her. “She’s in the church. She needs help.”
Sister Matthew nodded with understanding as she stepped into the hall. “Giving up a little one?”
“No. Or at least I don’t think so.” He hadn’t even thought about that. “She’s injured.”
“All right.” The nun diverted to the kitchen, grabbing her small bag of medical supplies before she followed Ben back into the church.
It was empty.
Ben hurried forward, holding the candlestick high. “She was just here a moment ago.”
The flames picked up shining, wet marks on the floor. Bloody footprints. Ben followed them up to the front of the church and behind the altar. The mysterious stranger huddled there, shaking, her knees folded up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them.
Sister Matthews set down her medical bag and approached the girl slowly, reaching her hand out as though trying to tame a stray dog.
“It’s all right. We’re not going to hurt you.
It looks like you’re hurt enough. Come out so I can take a look at you and get you fixed up. You’ll feel much better, then.”
Her big eyes darted between the two of them, and then the girl finally took Sister Matthews’ hand. She allowed herself to be led to the front pew.
“Good. Put your feet up here so I can see them,” Sister Matthews directed.
“I’ll get your pew all bloody.” The girl worried.
“It can be cleaned.” Sister Matthews took the girl’s ankles in her gentle hands. She guided her feet up onto the pew. “What’s your name, child?”